Polymer clay modelling : a sea monster

This is a step by step guide to making a model in polymer clay. I am a complete amateur and I plan to document what I create as I go. I may sell the finished model. This is partly to share, partly to document the process, and partly in order to invite feedback. I hope it is of interest.

This is George. I am not entirely sure why he is called George, but he is. He is not copied from any particular concept, and while he is supposed to be a sea monster, I do recognise that right now he looks a lot like a dinosaur.

George is made entirely of polymer clay and silver foil. Polymer clay is a lot like the modelling clay sold in the UK as Plasticine. It is very flexible and colourful and takes impressions well. While Plasticine is really a child's toy, the key difference in polymer clay is that it can be baked to cause it to harden. It does not air dry and can be repeatedly reworked until it is fired in this way. The clay I use is a combination of Fimo, Sculpey III, and super sculpey. For the finer detail super sculpey is really workable. It is soft and waxy, although it is also prone to losing detail under a very light touch.

George stands, or rather sits, about fifteen centimetres tall. This means he could potentially contain an awful lot of clay. To prevent this, since clay is a costly material, I have used silver foil as the base around which the clay is built up.

In the pictures here you can see the basic shaped rolled into the silver foil, and the way I have started to build up the clay on them.

You will notice that George is a bit purple right now. This is not his intended final colour. I have decided that he will be painted using acrylic paint once he is completed in terms of form. The purple is simply the colour that the mixed clays came out when I warmed them up and mixed them. The base layer of clay is primarily Fimo, although it is a mixture. As I moved to the clay where I wanted to have more control over the detail, I made the mix more Sculpey than Fimo, simply because it is softer.

I took the crude shaped, covered them in clay, and stuck them together loosely. After that I added more clay to fit between the main blobs, which I blended and smoothed together, partly to hide the joins, but also to give it reasonable structural integrity. You may notice that there are two different purples in the colour of the clay by this point - simply a case of what I had to hand.

With the basics in position, I started to work on the more difficult bit. As I am experimenting I have no idea if I have good technique. I've started with the head and I am working my way down. As I face a section I want to shape, I add clay or carve it away until the area looks roughly how I want it to, then I use tools to work on the finer detail The teeth and eyes are pure Super Sculpey, but the rest is a mixture. I found it helped me in those cases to have a strong contrast between the areas in terms of colour. The detail on the head is done by gouging methodically along the clay. I have heard of people creating a section of scales or similar in clay, then baking it and using it almost as a stamp to create texture on an object. I plan to give this a try at some point, but haven't used it as yet.

Before long, George started to shape up and look more like this:

I have no further pictures between the one above and the one at the top of the article that shows how George looks right now. You'll see lots of additional shaping around the head and eyes has been done, plus a very small amount around the arms.

My biggest challenge is making things look at least vaguely symmetrical. After that, the hardest part is working out what a limb or tongue or eye socket on a sea monster are supposed to look like. I want to make him more amphibious as I go, so there will probably be gills and fins. Once I figure out where to put them and how they should look. The hands and feet should be webbed and I'll do a lot more work on the tail.

I may yet make mistakes so bad he is never completed. but for now this is how he stands, and I'm pretty pleased with it so far!

Come back to read more about the project as I continue - and any feedback and tips would be appreciated in the meantime.